For people and businesses requiring instant access to information, the Internet and intranets have provided a vehicle for near real-time delivery of information from an enormous number of sources. For many of those same individuals, a way of communicating regardless of locality has been provided by two-way wireless communication technology such as cellular telephones, two-way pagers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Personal Information Managers (PIMs), and other handheld computing devices. In recent years, these two rapidly-advancing technology areas have come together, such that the two-way wireless communication device has become one of many entry points into the Internet and intranets.
One feature that many devices used to access the Internet have in common is that they can display hypermedia content, such as web pages. To do so, network servers and network personal computers (PCs) normally use standard web protocols and mark-up languages, such as Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), respectively. Wireless devices commonly use wireless protocols, such as Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) or Handheld Device Transport protocol (HDTP), and sometimes use markup languages such as Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Handheld Device Markup Language (HDML) to accomplish the same task.
Conventional PCs and some newer-generation wireless devices include browser software (often called “microbrowsers”, for wireless devices) for enabling the devices to access hypermedia content on the Internet and other networks. However, many earlier-generation wireless devices are not equipped with microbrowsers. The lack of a microbrowser restricts the ability of such devices to access hypermedia content on the Internet.
Limited Internet access has been provided to such wireless devices using a facility known as Short Message Service (SMS), which is available on many such devices. SMS allows users of certain wireless devices to send and receive alphanumeric messages of limited length (e.g., up to 160 characters). SMS is similar to paging, however, SMS does not require that the wireless device is active and within range when a message is sent; an SMS message generally will be held for a time until the wireless device is active and within range. SMS messages are generally transmitted within the same cell or to anyone with roaming capability. Although SMS messages are of limited length, SMS allows mobile users to receive critical information. SMS messages are typically sent through a narrowband channel that incurs a very low operating cost to the service providers.
SMS based Internet access is primarily performed by a submission of one or more “keyword” messages from the wireless device to a predetermined address or telephone number serviced by a server. After interacting with other information feeds on the Internet, the server prepares an SMS message that includes information based on the “keyword” message. The SMS message is then delivered to the wireless device that requested the information. A typical example is a request of a stock quote, in which the “keyword” message is the stock symbol and the returned SMS message is the corresponding quote information.
One problem with current technology is that service providers offering SMS based Internet access generally use customized and/or proprietary solutions to link the Internet to the wireless networks. These technologies, once in deployment and operation, make it difficult and expensive to conform to an industry-accepted or widely-used standard, such as WAP. WAP is becoming recognized as the next platform standard for the wireless community and has been adopted as the de facto standard by many wireless service providers. WAP-compliant wireless devices are being introduced by wireless telephone handset manufacturers, and WAP-compliant services are being offered by many service providers. There is a need, therefore, for a better solution which allows wireless devices without microbrowsers to access hypermedia content on the Internet.